


What Remains

by MartinFreemansThighs



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Dream Sex, Gen, Ghost Sherlock, Lonely John, M/M, Maybe more characters Idk, Not Canon Compliant, Past Viclock, might include Mary in the future, prequel???
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-20
Updated: 2017-06-25
Packaged: 2018-08-10 00:05:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7822501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MartinFreemansThighs/pseuds/MartinFreemansThighs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All that John Watson expects when he goes to 221b is a London flat that's miraculously within his price range, but he quickly finds out that his new home comes with much more than he bargained for. Not just rooms, old furniture, and the mess that the previous tenant left behind after his suicide, but what spirit remains of the famed detective himself.</p>
<p>Sherlock has managed to keep new tenants running scared for two years after his death, but for some reason, the doctor that has just moved in won't be shaken...maybe that's not such a bad thing, after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Strange Meeting

        **29 January 2010**

 

         Looked at a flat today...it was a bit odd, to say the least.  
         I guess I should start at the beginning--I don’t know if Ella would think that writing a blog will help if the blog I’m writing doesn’t make any sense.  
         

         I was walking in the park and I bumped into Mike Stamford. We were sort of mates when we were students. We got coffee, and I told him about my situation, with the bedsit. He said that he knew of a flat near central London that I might be able to afford, naturally I wanted to go and see it.

  
        The landlady was nice. The sweet, absentminded type. She reminds me of my gran. Especially when she gave me biscuits with my tea, even though I hadn’t asked for any.  
        The flat was much less sweet. It was a mess, and it was, erm. Eccentric. It definitely seemed like the lair of a psychopath. Apparently, the previous tenant was a mutual friend of Mike’s and the landlady’s, who had passed away a couple of years ago. I guess he was a strange bloke, who happened to have all of these odd heaps of junk piled everywhere that Mrs. Hudson couldn’t seem to part with. Even so, it's a nice change from where I am now.    
        The strangest part might not have been the flat itself, though...there were a couple of minutes when Mrs. Hudson insisted that Mike go downstairs with her to take a look at some old photos, and I was in the left in the place alone. It really was all a bit strange, but I swore that, for a moment, I saw this face in the mirror. It was probably a shadow on the wallpaper or something, but I felt like it was looking at me. God, Ella, if you’re reading this, please take it easy on me at our next appointment...but that was what made me sure that I could live there.


	2. The Stranger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock is stirred back into being.

           There was nothing, and then there was the stranger.  
           His unfamiliar creek on the stair had been enough to stir the scattered bits of Sherlock’s consciousness back into its entity. Sherlock felt him moving through the flat, as one feels slow ripples break over them underwater--he couldn’t see the man, not yet.  
           He felt out into darkness, sensed Mrs. Hudson, and Mike Stamford with the stranger. Were they really trying to rent it again? Had Sherlock had eyes, he’d have rolled them at Mrs. Hudson’s unending quest to give an explanation to the sounds she heard from his flat at night.

          As the three of them got closer, their thoughts of Sherlock wheeled into him, and made him feel--in the echoing, distant way that he could feel--guilt. The energy they devoted to him for that moment allowed him a greater presence, great enough to watch his flat through their memories.  
         Tranfixed to the image, there they were.  
         Upon seeing the flat, the stranger's expression dropped into a confusing mixture of amusement, amazement, uncertainty, and shock.  
         Even dead, Sherlock could sense that it was in disrepair. To think, he had to die to get Mrs. Hudson to stop dusting. All for the better, he thought.  
         "There's a lot of rubbish, I know," Mrs. Hudson began. Franticness betrayed itself in her hands, fluttering as they were in the air; as moths, flapping helplessly against the light of the stranger's oatmeal jumper. "I just don't know what to do with it--I donated some of it to a school, but there's so much here that wouldn't be appropriate for anyone, let alone children. I just can't throw it out."  
        "No, it's...it could be very nice," he quipped, hesitantly optimistic.

          _Doctor._ The thought drifted, trailing more deductions and observations behind it.

         Army. Drinks. Sibling. Father. 

        "That reminds me, Michael, I found those pictures I was talking to you about! Remember? Come and see them. No, really!" Mrs. Hudson chirped. She and Mike descended the stairs, leaving the stranger to stare around him.

        Sherlock watched as the stranger's eyes descended upon his possessions: the red-yarned net, a physical map of Moriarty's metaphorical web, which still hung on one of the walls; the strange selection of books; the leather and steel armchair; the skull. The skulls.

        The mirror.

        Being seen was an odd sensation.

        John's reflection stiffened slightly, before taking a cautionary glance at the door he'd walked through.  
        He looked back to the glass, and Sherlock found that he couldn't be seen anymore. The man deflated, slightly. He coughed down at his shoes before crossing the lounge to the stairs and peering up, toward what would be his room.

       Mike held the door open for Mrs. Hudson as she came rattling in with a tray of tea and biscuits (the good kind).  
      "Here you go, love," she said easily, passing him a cup and saucer, complete with biscuits leaned onto the saucer's rim.  
  
       "I'll take it," John said to Mrs. Hudson, more firmly than he'd intended.

       "What, milk?"

       "The flat. I'll take the flat," John clarified.

       "Your room is upstairs, dear, is that going to be a problem with your leg?"

        John flexed his leg, noted the ease with which the muscles worked as they should.

        "I don't think it will be."

        Mrs. Hudson smiled brilliantly at him, but soon after took on a look of worry.

        “Erm, there’s just one thing...don’t touch any of his things,” She said, seriously, her voice dropping to a whisper, her curled hand pressed into her chin. “He _hates_ it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the first fic I've posted--in order to keep it realistic for me, I'm going to keep the chapters short for now, but may group them together in the future.
> 
> Also, please take it easy on me.


	3. First Impressions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John is a curious man--or, at least, a bored one.

       John gathered everything worth keeping into a few boxes.  
      Hurriedly, though not for any reason that John could rationally cite, he snatched his keys from the desk and slipped open the desk drawer to retrieve one last crucial item.  
     It gleamed. John could imagine a wolfish smile in the light that reflected on the gun's surface.  
      Not tonight, he thought.

 

* * *

 

      John stepped onto the last creaking step onto the second floor, nudged open the door to his new home, and dropped his armful of boxes in the living room. He pretended not to notice the sudden absence of his limp. He took a moment to look around at the flat, taking in more of the signs of the man who had once lived there--he smiled slightly, as he noticed the bright colors of the box to ‘Operation!’ shining incongruously in a corner, but was distracted by something more capturing--the dust swirled down before the curtains, reflecting, and forming a pillar of light that seemed to creep into the silent room. It made its way toward the floor in a ghostly procession of what might have been the man’s skin before it became dust.  
      He pushed his one small box labeled ‘kitchen’ across the linoleum with his foot, then looked up to notice for the first time that the kitchen table was still littered with the remnants of some kind of science experiment; out of curiosity, he picked up a petri dish and wiped the grime away from its inscription-- _Clostridium Bochulinum-_ -before carefully placing it back on the table and digging out some soap to wash his hands.  
      _Who_ was _this man?_  Automatically, he lathered his forearms, and rinsed in the mechanical way prone to doctors.  
He turned the water off, and stood a moment.  
      Now that he was here, in this flat, it did seem a bit insane, didn’t it? To live with what remains of some dead, probably deranged….. _what?_ He picked up what appeared to be the log to the experiment, skimmed it, but found the net of black, needle-like writing unhelpful.  
      Based on the web of madness on the sitting room wall, it had seemed that maybe he was some sort of investigator?

  
      He walked into the living room, and looked at the eccentric items there--he glanced at the knife on the mantlepiece, and noticed that it was pinning post in its place. The envelope read, in a delicate scroll, “Sherlock Holmes.” No address.  
      He said the name aloud to himself, repeated it in his mind. Even the man’s _name_ was odd.  
      More than willing to be distracted from the dull task of unpacking his things, or cleaning what he could of the flat, John decided to take a more intimate look into his ‘roommate’s’ private life.  
      He tried the door to Sherlock’s room, and was disappointed to find it locked.  
      He crossed the sitting room to his jacket, where it hung on the wall, and fished the keys he’d been given to the flat from the pocket of his jacket, then returned to the locked door.  
      He fussed with the key to the flat, and was unsurprised when it didn’t work. Having one key for the front door and to one’s bedroom could be problematic.  
He made a mental note to ask Mrs. Hudson for the key later--after all, this was his home now. He should at least know what’s in it. From the look of the place, John would only be half surprised to find a corpse behind that door, for christ’s sakes.  
      Yes, he determined. He would ask.  
      With the door unyielding, and John (as well as John’s bothersome hip, which had once again become stiff) unwilling to break it down, he resorted to more modern means of finding out about Sherlock Holmes.

  
      He sat down at his laptop, jammed his finger into the power button, and waited. The computer gurgled testily, then beeped in irritation, and then finally, the screen brightened and he was able to log on.  
      He typed the name into a search engine, each letter jabbed deliberately into the keyboard, pressed Enter.  
      A flood of links populated the page, and he was shocked at the number--with a name like that, it probably wasn’t a coincidence.  
      The top result, “The Science of Deduction,” was the website of the man himself. It only took a few moments of reading to find out what he couldn’t tell from the objects he’d seen: First, according to Sherlock, he was a “Consulting Detective”; second, he was crap at running a website. Who wants to read a list of types of ash? Especially one that’s 240 items long? A man with such fascinating work who chooses to make that his leading article must _want_ to turn people away.  
      As he read more of the accounts of Sherlock’s actual cases, as well as Sherlock’s responses to comments on his posts, John realized something else: He actually seemed kind of...charming. Standoffish, but even so. Sort of funny. And a genius. And--

  
      And dead.

  
      He cleared his throat, before going back to the other links.  
He was shocked to find a number of news articles about his suicide, especially ones with headlines in all caps, screaming from the page things like, “FAKE GENIUS DOUBLE-SUICIDE,” “SECRET AFFAIR OF MADMEN UNCOVERED,” and, “SHERLOCK JUMPS: THE DEATH OF INTELLECT.”  
      He read a couple of them. Their sources were inscrutable, and their evidence was rarely specified. It seemed the claim was that some London crime boss had actually been an actor, operating under Holmes’s orders, committing bank robberies, murders, kidnappings…..one article offered particularly gruesome accounts of what John hoped was the worst of the offenses. He had done all of this, just to make Sherlock Holmes seem special and unique. To make him a hero. And when the police finally began looking in his direction, he and his puppet criminal made good on a suicide pact on the roof of a hospital.

  
      It didn't add up, John thought, but he wasn't sure exactly how. He furrowed his brows, scrolling down past images of crime scene tape billowing in the wind beside a stationary ambulance, police standing as if for portraits, looking mournful and sick. He absently noted that it had been his own Alma Mater, St. Bartholomew’s, that they'd chosen as their death place.  
      If Sherlock Holmes had wanted people to like him, badly enough to go to all that, then why had he written such dry articles? Why had he covered his own home in poisons, and skulls, and other flashing signs that would have made any sane person want to keep out?  
      He recalled thinking that this place was the lair of a madman. Perhaps that was truer even than he would have believed.  
      He glanced to Sherlock’s door again. Locked, still. Stoically guarding the secrets that could have answered these questions.

  
      He left the news articles alone, and continued on to find a few more pages dedicated to the man. An entire online community, claiming ardently that Sherlock Holmes was alive and solving cases the world over, and that he would someday come back; blog entries about how Sherlock Holmes had saved their lives, their children, their businesses. People begging for anyone reading to believe that Sherlock Holmes, the man who’d slain their dragons, was real.  
      Just as he was about to leave the subject for a moment, John decided to look at the image results. His eyebrows shot up.  
He whistled to himself, without thinking.

  
      Sherlock Holmes, psychotic killer or public savior, was hot.

 

      He closed the laptop and leaned back into his seat with a sigh.   
      He rubbed his eyes, then left them closed for a moment, resting his chin on his palm--just as he did, he heard a sound from the kitchen, the distinct combination of “pop” and “click” that every man, woman, and child in England knew all too well: _kettle’s boiled._  
      His eyes snapped open. He looked over into the kitchen, and of course, no one was in it.  
      With renewed alertness, he followed the sound with caution.

      He arrived at the kettle, held his hand to it and found that it was hot, though empty of water.  
He opened the cupboard directly over the kettle, and found what appeared to be an ancient box of crummy tea bags, a jar of black slime that John didn’t dare touch, and an oddly placed wooden spoon.

  
      “We’re out of tea,” he murmured to the empty flat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Also, while I wasn't writing as much, the "soundtrack" to this fic was made private (but I think of it as "under construction")--I'll link to it if/when I perfect it.


	4. Ghosts Haunting Ghosts

       Sherlock watched as the stranger ambled about the room. The man fingered the red web, felt along the spines of his books, and so on. He observed the moment that the stranger stood at the sink in his dim kitchen, wondering  _what the hell_ he was doing.  
       Sherlock could feel John thinking about him. It was cheating, he knew, but he couldn’t quite help it--the thoughts, like warm light, extended from him unseen and reached whatever existed of Sherlock there. It brought him to a slightly higher level of consciousness, as it always did. He didn’t bother contemplating the mechanics of it, but instead enjoyed the sensation of existing, thinking, seeing.  
  
       He continued to observe the newcomer with interest.  
  
       His previous guests had been, to put it nicely, complete and total idiots. Worse still, they had been lousy housemates. One had taken it upon herself to wash his plague-ridden petri dishes with liquid dish detergent, resulting in a nearly-fatal illness that had motivated her to leave the flat; another had begun selling Sherlock’s things on Ebay, to the very small (but surprisingly dedicated) “infamous fake genius” niche market; and yet another had been incredibly rude to Mrs. Hudson--not to mention that his idea of ‘hygiene’ had been to wash up in the shower with the same tattered tea-towel he used to clean everything else.  
  
      As one would anticipate, they were removed.  
  
  
      It would be taking too much credit for Sherlock to claim that he scared them all away on his own--though he was glad to see them go, it was not always a conscious effort. When you’re a ‘ghost’, sometimes you make the effort to smash people’s things, wake them up from nightmares whilst your bleeding face looms over their bedside, sending them screaming from your home, and sometimes it just sort of...happens. Either way, in every previous case, his tenants’ prompt and often dramatic exits left him almost pleased, almost satisfied.  
  
      It was not nearly enough, and yet it was more than he could have asked for.  
  
      Dying is a rather large commitment, he had come to realize, one he had rushed into rather hastily. He hadn’t even bothered to finish his last experiment, to solve his last case--he knew, now, that it had been the housemaid, but could tell no one. A small guilt, to accompany those unscalable ones which dominated his few scattered, cherished thoughts.

  
      Sherlock’s attention was returned to the subject at hand, as said subject sat down at his computer and began to research the late Sherlock Holmes.  
      If he could have, Sherlock would have grimaced at the headlines John clicked on. Page after page of sullying tromp, countless online “news” sources repeating the same few pieces of sensationalist fluff, all painting Sherlock as a criminal mastermind.  
  
      Had he realized that this would happen when he’d jumped? Yes.  
  
      Did he think he’d be forced to observe it in astral form? No.  
  
      The interest Sherlock had in the newcomer grew, when he noticed a distinct confusion ebb from him. He resisted the information.  
  
      The stranger made a doubtful hum before exiting the “news” websites, and switching over to the image results. The stranger earned a spiritual roll of Sherlock’s non-existent eyes by whistling to himself, and murmuring a zesty “Well, hello there,” to himself, and for an instant, Sherlock nearly felt something, some rose-coloured warmth, before devastation momentarily took hold.  
  
      Among the images of Sherlock’s final crime scene, Sherlock at a press release, Sherlock looking oh-so-serious was the one image Sherlock hoped never to see again--his broken body, pale and vacant, lying dead upon the sidewalk. High-velocity impact was evident in the blood that crawled over the image.  
  
      He knew that he had little (if any) control of his comings and goings, but he attempted to dissolve his consciousness--he tried to see nothing, think nothing...but was disappointed when all his little world remained before him. In fact, he felt as aware as he had ever been--post-mortem, anyway.  
  
      His devastation softened as the stranger shut off his computer and leaned back into his chair with a sigh. He was clearly exhausted, rings forming around his eyes--nightmares? Had Sherlock already given him nightmares? He could probably use a cup--  
  
 _Thunk._ As Sherlock thought it, the kettle’s sound echoed from the kitchen, causing the stranger to jolt.  
  
      Ah, yes. Psychokinesis.  
  
      The flat, in a manner of speaking, was the closest thing to a body that Sherlock currently possessed--it being a space which contained his soul, by any reckoning--and as such, its parts reacted to him when, on occasion, his presence was strong enough to dictate them. It hadn’t happened in so long, he nearly forgot that it _could_ \--a man two years dead is hardly ever called upon to act. At times, he could will it, and at others, it was a subconscious motion that he could not suppress.  
  
 _Afferent neurons in the peripheral---  
  
_       The stranger strode cautiously into the kitchen, observed the empty kettle, then grimaced at Sherlock’s bare cupboard. He didn’t do the shopping while alive, and he certainly didn’t do it while dead.  
  
      “We’re out of tea,” He said, simply.  
  
 _We.  
  
_        There is an immortal part of one’s identity which livens to being addressed, and which drives us to respond in kind. Sherlock guessed, in the ponderings that followed the realization that ‘ghosts’ did exist in some capacity, that this was the source of most superstition-- _speak of the devil, and he shall appear._  
  
       This part of Sherlock yearned for a reply, but he could make none. It seemed that the kettle stunt was all he could manage, for the moment.  
  
       The man turned to lean against the counter, glancing about. He, too, it seemed, yearned for a reply.  
  
       When the flat remained silent, he apparently resolved to take the advice given. He returned to the sitting room for a sheet of paper, listed a few grocery items--very few, Sherlock later realized--and then promptly left the flat. He forgot to lock the door, Sherlock thought, and the deadbolt slowly creaked itself around.  
  
       Typical.  
  


      With the flat empty, the human energy therein quickly dissipated, and Sherlock’s consciousness receded. Darkness crept in, and time stopped. He was at once present, and and absent, unseeing.  
  
      This was death.  
  
      In this state, he sometimes wandered. Memories, impressions sometimes washed over him-- _ghosts haunting ghosts_. A dream of another time, of one who was once a stranger, and then a lover, and then a stranger again, echoed out from his memories.


End file.
